Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7351015" data-attributes="member: 42582">Agatha Christie's crime stories aren't news reports. She's not discovering whodunnit, by following the clues and tracing back the causes.She's making it up!In the context of your PC's sword swing, the only way anyone knows that the sword was swung true is because there is a social process, which includes rolling dice and looking up to hit charts and the like, which tells us what the next bit of the fiction is to be: we all agree that f the dice come up a hit, then the fiction includes the sword swinging true; if the dice come up a miss, the the fiction includes a failed attempt to hurt the orc.So the "causal relationship" between sword swing and injured orc is authored in response to the dice rolls. The fictional event doesn't cause you to roll a d20. Your action declaration "I attack the orc", perhaps followed by a nod from the GM, is what causes you to roll the die.This is what I am saying about analysis: no one is obliged to analyse, but once you do you have to at least try and get it right. Saying that events in the fiction cause people to do stuff is obviously not right. Look at the actual procedures of the game - it is people talking to one another that causes them to pick up dice, consult charts, etc. It is these actual social processes that lead to the creation of some fiction. The fiction doesn't create the social processes!</blockquote>